Anyway, for him, he realised this halfway through the pregnancy, and removed his soul from the process. The earthly arguments that he was witnessing from the comfort of the womb became too much and the idea of entering this world with his soul, to this parentage, was bleak.

Then what happened to the foetus, the baby, soulless? Who was born then? Did he return or did another soul come down and hitch a ride? Who was the sickly boy, gasping for breath, clinging to his mother? Was he really just waiting for the soul to return and take pity and fill him with spirit? Is that why he was always at the point of death from his lungs? The lungs the source of grief; the physical manifestation of grief. Asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia; these were Ever’s defining character points. A boy defined by illness. Expressing everything through illness. Painfully shy, as his soul hadn’t arrived to fill him with passion and purpose.

Yet.

He was waiting, for his human being-ness to be completed. He was a vessel with no rudder; the only things that could fulfil him and fill him were animal desires, food and sensual base feeling. A reptilian brain. He was a bit like a dog. Responding to the senses, heat, cold, smell, noise. He explored the immediacy of his environment without judgement. The judgement that the presence of an old soul can give, that had-been-here-before, déjà vu; so his knowledge was acquired in the absence of experience.

But when would the soul or new soul, or indeed any old soul, come back?

*

No, it was him. He thought it was him. He had to think it was him. Because he could never know if it wasn’t him because he could never have the realisation of it not being him because he would never have the concept of realising if it wasn’t.

It had to be him.

Take him or leave him.

He took it. Him.

Yes. It was his soul, it had come back and he should just lump it.

The Angels had done their work.

Chapter Seven

Tea arrived with attitude and broke the silence that had allowed them both to sit.

Sit there as if. Sit there as if they had sat many afternoons before, contemplating the stagnancy of the leaves in the pool that moved with the gentle breeze, not with the mechanical consequence of filtration.

Birds of paradise lined the perimeter of the pool and looked like they should be appreciated as an exotic plant, but somehow betrayed an ordinariness, like a tourist standing out of place in the wrong clothing.

The yellow-y orange-y and the blue-y purple-y. Just the wrong colours, the wrong hue. Ever was big on hue. Somehow, nature had taken a little break, had a little moment of taste relapse.

‘Milk? Sugar? No, you can’t have sugar, no one should.’

She took away the need for a response.